10 SEO Questions to Check if You Are Ready for the Job

In almost every industry, 80% of the results are brought in by 20% of innovative input. 

If you are looking for a career in digital marketing and need to highlight your skills, it is imperative that you are able to communicate your knowledge about SEO and how it positively affects the business. Business owners hire digital marketing experts to help improve their reach and consequently their sales with the power of the internet. And SEO, perhaps, plays the most vital role in doing so. So interviewers may ask in-depth questions to measure your grasp of the concept and how you plan to implement them. We have prepared 10 SEO Questions to Check if You Are Ready for the Job.

Explain SEO and Its Types With Examples

Before we enumerate the questions, let us first understand what SEO is all about. Simply said, search engine optimization(SEO) is the continuing process of upgrading website content in order to appear at the top of search results without having to pay. It is the practice of enhancing the quality and quantity of internet traffic by making a website or a web page more visible to online search engine users. There are different types of SEO as shown below:

• On-Page SEO: Just like the name suggests, it's the list of activities done on the website to improve its likeability and in the process, it's ranked on the SERP. This entails writing keyword-rich meta descriptions, correct title tags, and adding keywords and phrases (with high search volume) that are relevant to your content.

• Off-Page SEO: All those activities that happen behind the scenes like creating viable backlinks, social media shares of your content, brand mentions (with or without a link), and bookmarking that are high-value indications to the search engine about the relevance of your website or brand. 

• Technical SEO: Usually performed by developers, it is the act of enhancing the content and structure of your site for indexing and crawling by search engine crawlers. It includes optimizing the website’s backend code to render properly, improving the loading speed of the page, using canonical URLs to avoid instances of duplicate content, etc.

• Local SEO: It is those SEO activities that enable the website to appear in regional search results with phrases like “near me” or “in X location”. Since Google is ranked the number one search engine in the world, updating your Google “My Business” listing and adding a Google Map with a marker to your website can help with local SEO.

• Mobile SEO: Having a mobile-friendly website alone does not make much of a difference in today’s competitive landscape. Mobile SEO delves deeper into making the search results more relevant for searches done via smartphones and other handheld devices. More priority is given to the content that is legible without having to zoom(in or out), with tap targets sufficiently spaced, and those websites that avoid horizontal scrolling. 

Now that you are all caught up, let's get cracking on those questions.

1. Can you list 10 On-Page SEO factors in the order of importance, and can you explain each with an example?

1. A Secure and Accessible Website: Websites with SSL certificates are deemed trustworthy and safe. 

2. Page Speed: Slow loading speed increases bounce rate

3. Mobile Friendliness: Avoid horizontal scrolling and use legible fonts suitable for handheld devices.

4. Domain Age, URL, and Authority: Older domains that are well maintained are more preferred and have more authority.

5. Optimized Content: Improves site visibility and relevance on SERP.

6. Technical SEO: Improves the quality of the website by optimizing the elements and content.

7. User Experience: Making your users happy with brilliant UX is an indication to search engines that your site is relevant.

8. Links: Helps drive more traffic to your website.

9. Social Signals: The user interactions with your webpage by likes, comments, and shares along with social media visibility from the search engine's view are collectively called social signals. They serve the same purpose as citations and backlinks do for your website.

10. Real Business Information: Ensure that your complete business information(name, address, and phone number) along with relevant listings are readily available for your users. Having numerous positive reviews can also help.

2. What is Keyword Research and how many keywords can we target on each page?

Keywords are usually one or two words that web users usually use to search for something on search engines. Keyword research is the understanding of what keywords or phrases are popular among your target audience, giving a deeper insight into the customer’s buying journey and how to design your online marketing strategy. 

Regarding the number of keywords to target per page, there is no hard and fast rule. The precise figure will be determined by your budget and timetable for results. For most small companies, starting with 5 keywords (each having a monthly search volume of 100+) is advised. When you're obtaining strong results from your original keyword choices, you may shift your focus and resources to targeting new ones. For larger organizations, it can increase.

3. What is the difference between 301 Redirection and Canonical Tag? Please explain the use of each.

301 Redirect:

A redirect is a status code that informs servers, browsers, and users that the URL they are attempting to reach no longer exists and has been redirected to another URL. The 301 Redirect informs servers and search engines that this URL has been permanently relocated.

Common reasons for using a 301 redirect include:

• A website domain change as a result of your company's rebranding or renaming

• The domain of a website remains the same, but a redesign causes all URLs on the website to change.

• Your website's page has been removed 

Canonical Tag:

A canonical tag is a line of code applied to your website that tells search engines which page should be indexed by that search engine. Technical SEOs employ a canonical tag to assist search engines to distinguish between website content that would otherwise be deemed duplicate material.

Canonical tags should be used when your website has pages with duplicate content and needs both sites to be accessible to people as well as search engines. What would be considered duplicate content and discarded may be of prime importance to you like landing pages that are comparable in content with other URLs on your website but are developed specifically for a certain campaign. Other examples include dynamic content that is created into numerous URLs based on the user's travel around your website. International content or websites that target different geographic locations yet include the same material in the same language can also be deemed duplicate content. Finally when a 301 redirect is not possible to implement, then canonical tags are used. 

4. What is keyword cannibalization and how to avoid it?

The term keyword cannibalization refers to the process where similar content published recently on your website can end up competing against the original content which is also on your website, resulting in a lower ranking on search engine results for the website. Keyword stuffing is also a leading cause of this phenomenon, because of which the search engine crawlers may give more importance to a page with less prominence, while important pages may get snubbed. Assume you have two articles on the same topic. Google, in this case, is unable to differentiate which article should be ranked first for a given query. Furthermore, essential criteria like backlinks and CTR are spread among several blogs rather than one. As a result, they will almost certainly both rank lower.

Over a course of time, as more and more content gets added to the website, the chances of similar content being added are higher, which leads to keyword cannibalization. So in order to avoid them, below mentioned are some tricks to use.  

1. Audit your content (even old ones)

2. Analyze content performance

3. Confirm what content stays and what doesn't

4. Merge, delete or redirect duplicate content(if any)

5. How much content do we need to rank a page?

For years we’ve been told the golden rule for blog posts and articles are around 500 words; this is presumed to be long enough to convey useful information, but not so long that people might lose interest and scroll away. More recent statistics, however, have demonstrated that longer content seems to be the trend among those sites that actually rank highly on Google. The results of this data appear to indicate that websites featuring content of 2,000 words or more rank higher on Google than those sticking to the supposedly ‘golden’ 500-word limit.

More content is unquestionably better, but only if it is relevant and informative to your target audience. Google considers both quality and quantity, so it's preferable to make sure everything you upload is of high quality and to build on it gradually rather than churning it out rapidly. Besides, the content published must have the right keywords that are in demand. 

6. Scenario 1: If the keywords are ranking but we are still not getting traffic, what could be the reason?

Ranking higher usually means that people will click on your website as compared to the ones below, resulting in increased traffic. However, in spite of ranking high, if your website receives less traffic, then it could be due to one of the following reasons:

1. The search term on your website that is ranking high are too specific and hence become irrelevant. So if people are not searching for that particular keyword, chances are lesser for traffic to increase.

2. Search result snippets that show up from your website for a search may not be familiar to the audience. Since it is not the result they were expecting, they may scroll down to other results.

3. Slow-loading website can be a big reason for bounce rates. So even if they do visit your site, if the page does not load in a matter of seconds, chances are they will exit immediately.

7. Scenario 2: If we are receiving 95% of traffic from mobile then why should we bother to maintain the desktop version?

Despite the fact that mobile is very prevalent, desktop browsing is far from dead. It is, in fact, still pretty pertinent. As a result, ensure that your website is accessible on any device.

Millions of individuals continue to access the internet through a desktop computer, both at work and at home. There are still others who prefer desktop access since it appears to be much easier for them than learning a new mobile device. Indeed, several websites reveal that more than 75% of people prefer desktop computers to handheld gadgets. That is why it is critical to review your Google Analytics statistics.

For the best results across the board, optimize your website to display correctly whether mobile or desktop.

8. How many links can we have in Header and Footer Navigation?

A navigation menu on a website is an orderly set of connections to other web pages, generally internal sites. Navigation menus are most typically seen on internet page headers or sidebars, allowing users to rapidly reach the most useful pages. Overcrowding the header and footer navigation bar with links is never recommended as it can be deemed an SEO tactic by website crawlers. It is best to limit the count to between 7 and 10 for the best results. 

9. What is Schema and why should we use it? Can you give 3 examples where the schema is used?

The term Schema was derived from the Greek word that means form. In computer programming, a Schema is a structure that maps the storage of data in a database. The relationships between the tables in a given database are given by it and are used by organizations when they utilize data modeling. In SEO, Schema plays an important role in defining the different aspects of a website. It helps the web crawlers to understand the relationship between products and people to better understand the search intent with the content available. 

• Using Schema makes it easier to bring rich snippets from your website to the top of SERPs thereby increasing the traffic.

• Schema markup helps Google understand your content and also crawl your webpage better.

• Search engines can have a clearer idea of what services your site offers by establishing a connection between your social media tags and schema.

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10. Can you explain the importance of Backlinks and the top ways to acquire relevant backlinks?

Backlinks allow your website to be visited by clicking on a link from a different website. This way, even if your website is not at the top of the search results, the chances of increasing the organic website traffic improve, and consequently more sales. Creating a backlink in a popular website of your industry has proven to be more effective than randomly putting them on any website. They work as a mode of advertisement for your brand and enhance the brand authority. 

Here are some of the best ways to acquire relevant backlinks:

• Do a competitor study and try to find out their best backlinks. Replicate the backlinks of those competitor websites that rank higher in SERP than your website. Make sure to replicate only relevant and high-quality backlinks.

• Using infographics, especially on social media, has proven to be more shareable and thus helps in better link building.

• Keep a lookout for brand mentions, especially that of your competitors on public forums. Responding to a query with relevant information can increase your website traffic in the days to come. 

• Well written guest blogs or posts can also help

• Optimize your website to improve the navigation and also the internal linking structures using anchor texts. 

• Amend broken links, both internal and external. 

• Writing testimonials on websites of the services you utilize in your industry can earn a link from their homepage. 

Bonus Tip: Most interviews include questions about the blog and resources we utilize to keep our expertise up to date. So keep a list of high-quality websites that you use.